Flights In And Out Of Southland Resume After 90-Minute FAA Computer Problem

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) computer glitch caused the grounding of flights in and out of the Southern California for about 90 minutes Wednesday afternoon.

Los Angeles International Airport, Bob Hope Airport and John Wayne Airport, were all affected, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

A computer outage in the LA air route center was responsible for the delays, CBS News’ Bob Orr reported.

Departures from Bob Hope and Ontario airports resumed shortly before 3:30 p.m., according to the airports’ official Twitter accounts.

The FAA had ordered a “ground stop” that kept departing planes on the ground just before 2 p.m. Officials said planes in the air that were ready to land were permitted to land. Flights that were headed to Southern California that had not yet taken off were also grounded.

Officials blamed the stop on “technical issues,” but didn’t get more specific.

The ground stop was lifted around 3:30 p.m.

Delays of up to two hours were reported at LAX as airlines tried to get back to a normal schedule.

Reporting from LAX Wednesday evening, officials told KCAL9’s Andrea Fujii that they expected to get back to normal by about 11 p.m.

Fujii said about 400 flights were delayed 2-3 hours and about 60 flights were canceled.

She reported that the FAA and a team from Lockheed Martin, designers of the computer system, were investigating the glitch.